SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLYWhy so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified

BY BERNARD LEWISThe Roots of Muslim Rage

In one of his letters Thomas Jefferson remarked that in matters of religion "the maxim of civil government" should be reversed and we should rather say, "Divided we stand, united, we fall." In this remark Jefferson was setting forth with classic terseness an idea that has come to be regarded as essentially American: the separation of Church and State. This idea was not entirely new; it had some precedents in the writings of Spinoza, Locke, and the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. It was in the United States, however, that the principle was first given the force of law and gradually, in the course of two centuries, became a reality.

If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.

This formulation of the problems posed by the relations between religion and politics, and the possible solutions to those problems, arise from Christian, not universal, principles and experience. There are other religious traditions in which religion and politics are differently perceived, and in which, therefore, the problems and the possible solutions are radically different from those we know in the West. Most of these traditions, despite their often very high level of sophistication and achievement, remained or became local—limited to one region or one culture or one people. There is one, however, that in its worldwide distribution, its continuing vitality, its universalist aspirations, can be compared to Christianity, and that is Islam.

Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.

We should not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem. The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility. There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations; there is still an imposing Western presence—cultural, economic, diplomatic—in Muslim lands, some of which are Western allies. Certainly nowhere in the Muslim world, in the Middle East or elsewhere, has American policy suffered disasters or encountered problems comparable to those in Southeast Asia or Central America. There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.

At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the "enemies of God."

This phrase, which recurs so frequently in the language of the Iranian leadership, in both their judicial proceedings and their political pronouncements, must seem very strange to the modern outsider, whether religious or secular. The idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate. It is not, however, all that alien. The concept of the enemies of God is familiar in preclassical and classical antiquity, and in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as in the Koran. A particularly relevant version of the idea occurs in the dualist religions of ancient Iran, whose cosmogony assumed not one but two supreme powers. The Zoroastrian devil, unlike the Christian or Muslim or Jewish devil, is not one of God's creatures performing some of God's more mysterious tasks but an independent power, a supreme force of evil engaged in a cosmic struggle against God. This belief influenced a number of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sects, through Manichaeism and other routes. The almost forgotten religion of the Manichees has given its name to the perception of problems as a stark and simple conflict between matching forces of pure good and pure evil.

The Koran is of course strictly monotheistic, and recognizes one God, one universal power only. There is a struggle in human hearts between good and evil, between God's commandments and the tempter, but this is seen as a struggle ordained by God, with its outcome preordained by God, serving as a test of mankind, and not, as in some of the old dualist religions, a struggle in which mankind has a crucial part to play in bringing about the victory of good over evil. Despite this monotheism, Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, was at various stages influenced, especially in Iran, by the dualist idea of a cosmic clash of good and evil, light and darkness, order and chaos, truth and falsehood, God and the Adversary, variously known as devil, Iblis, Satan, and by other names.

The Rise of the House of UnbeliefIn Islam the struggle of good and evil very soon acquired political and even military dimensions. Muhammad, it will be recalled, was not only a prophet and a teacher, like the founders of other religions; he was also the head of a polity and of a community, a ruler and a soldier. Hence his struggle involved a state and its armed forces. If the fighters in the war for Islam, the holy war "in the path of God," are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God. And since God is in principle the sovereign, the supreme head of the Islamic state—and the Prophet and, after the Prophet, the caliphs are his vicegerents—then God as sovereign commands the army. The army is God's army and the enemy is God's enemy. The duty of God's soldiers is to dispatch God's enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them—that is to say, the afterlife.

Clearly related to this is the basic division of mankind as perceived in Islam. Most, probably all, human societies have a way of distinguishing between themselves and others: insider and outsider, in-group and out-group, kinsman or neighbor and foreigner. These definitions not only define the outsider but also, and perhaps more particularly, help to define and illustrate our perception of ourselves.

In the classical Islamic view, to which many Muslims are beginning to return, the world and all mankind are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, known as the House of Unbelief or the House of War, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam. But the greater part of the world is still outside Islam, and even inside the Islamic lands, according to the view of the Muslim radicals, the faith of Islam has been undermined and the law of Islam has been abrogated. The obligation of holy war therefore begins at home and continues abroad, against the same infidel enemy.

Like every other civilization known to human history, the Muslim world in its heyday saw itself as the center of truth and enlightenment, surrounded by infidel barbarians whom it would in due course enlighten and civilize. But between the different groups of barbarians there was a crucial difference. The barbarians to the east and the south were polytheists and idolaters, offering no serious threat and no competition at all to Islam. In the north and west, in contrast, Muslims from an early date recognized a genuine rival—a competing world religion, a distinctive civilization inspired by that religion, and an empire that, though much smaller than theirs, was no less ambitious in its claims and aspirations. This was the entity known to itself and others as Christendom, a term that was long almost identical with Europe.

The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some fourteen centuries. It began with the advent of Islam, in the seventh century, and has continued virtually to the present day. It has consisted of a long series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests. For the first thousand years Islam was advancing, Christendom in retreat and under threat. The new faith conquered the old Christian lands of the Levant and North Africa, and invaded Europe, ruling for a while in Sicily, Spain, Portugal, and even parts of France. The attempt by the Crusaders to recover the lost lands of Christendom in the east was held and thrown back, and even the Muslims' loss of southwestern Europe to the Reconquista was amply compensated by the Islamic advance into southeastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna. For the past three hundred years, since the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 and the rise of the European colonial empires in Asia and Africa, Islam has been on the defensive, and the Christian and post-Christian civilization of Europe and her daughters has brought the whole world, including Islam, within its orbit.

For a long time now there has been a rising tide of rebellion against this Western paramountcy, and a desire to reassert Muslim values and restore Muslim greatness. The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat. The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West. The second was the undermining of his authority in his own country, through an invasion of foreign ideas and laws and ways of life and sometimes even foreign rulers or settlers, and the enfranchisement of native non-Muslim elements. The third—the last straw—was the challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these alien, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home was inevitable. It was also natural that this rage should be directed primarily against the millennial enemy and should draw its strength from ancient beliefs and loyalties.

Europe and her daughters? The phrase may seem odd to Americans, whose national myths, since the beginning of their nationhood and even earlier, have usually defined their very identity in opposition to Europe, as something new and radically different from the old European ways. This is not, however, the way that others have seen it; not often in Europe, and hardly ever elsewhere.

Though people of other races and cultures participated, for the most part involuntarily, in the discovery and creation of the Americas, this was, and in the eyes of the rest of the world long remained, a European enterprise, in which Europeans predominated and dominated and to which Europeans gave their languages, their religions, and much of their way of life.

For a very long time voluntary immigration to America was almost exclusively European. There were indeed some who came from the Muslim lands in the Middle East and North Africa, but few were Muslims; most were members of the Christian and to a lesser extent the Jewish minorities in those countries. Their departure for America, and their subsequent presence in America, must have strengthened rather than lessened the European image of America in Muslim eyes.

In the lands of Islam remarkably little was known about America. At first the voyages of discovery aroused some interest; the only surviving copy of Columbus's own map of America is a Turkish translation and adaptation, still preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum, in Istanbul. A sixteenth-century Turkish geographer's account of the discovery of the New World, titled The History of Western India, was one of the first books printed in Turkey. But thereafter interest seems to have waned, and not much is said about America in Turkish, Arabic, or other Muslim languages until a relatively late date. A Moroccan ambassador who was in Spain at the time wrote what must surely be the first Arabic account of the American Revolution. The Sultan of Morocco signed a treaty of peace and friendship with the United States in 1787, and thereafter the new republic had a number of dealings, some friendly, some hostile, most commercial, with other Muslim states. These seem to have had little impact on either side. The American Revolution and the American republic to which it gave birth long remained unnoticed and unknown. Even the small but growing American presence in Muslim lands in the nineteenth century—merchants, consuls, missionaries, and teachers—aroused little or no curiosity, and is almost unmentioned in the Muslim literature and newspapers of the time.

The Second World War, the oil industry, and postwar developments brought many Americans to the Islamic lands; increasing numbers of Muslims also came to America, first as students, then as teachers or businessmen or other visitors, and eventually as immigrants. Cinema and later television brought the American way of life, or at any rate a certain version of it, before countless millions to whom the very name of America had previously been meaningless or unknown. A wide range of American products, particularly in the immediate postwar years, when European competition was virtually eliminated and Japanese competition had not yet arisen, reached into the remotest markets of the Muslim world, winning new customers and, perhaps more important, creating new tastes and ambitions. For some, America represented freedom and justice and opportunity. For many more, it represented wealth and power and success, at a time when these qualities were not regarded as sins or crimes.

And then came the great change, when the leaders of a widespread and widening religious revival sought out and identified their enemies as the enemies of God, and gave them "a local habitation and a name" in the Western Hemisphere. Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?

Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?

I think that should read "...for radical Muslims, of Islam." As the author states earlier in the article, "There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations..."

As for why the hatred of America, we offer what radical Islamists do not: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote (for men and women), freedom of thought, freedom of movement. All things that are frightening to any radical theology.Theirs just happens to be one that is willing to do whatever it takes to abolish those freedoms.

Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?

I think that should read "...for radical Muslims, of Islam." As the author states earlier in the article, "There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations..."

**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. What criteria do you use to define a radical muslim from an orthodox muslim?**

As for why the hatred of America, we offer what radical Islamists do not: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote (for men and women), freedom of thought, freedom of movement. All things that are frightening to any radical theology.Theirs just happens to be one that is willing to do whatever it takes to abolish those freedoms.

Our system of government is utterly contrary to sharia law. The problem is that sharia law is the law of allah and to ignore god's law and make your own is not acceptable in classic islamic theology.

**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. **

Don't post an article in which the author himself states that "The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility", and then say that contrary to the author's assertions, peaceful Muslims don't exist. It comes off as hypocritical.

The problem is that the extremists are more visible than their peaceful brethren. Depending on who's numbers you use, there are between .700 billion and 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. IF they were ALL extremists bent on the destruction of the western world, the speed at which they would accomplish this mission would accelerate exponentially.

Are there Muslims who hate us? Yes. Are there Muslims willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our way of life? Yes.

Are we trying to deal with them? Yes, with varying degrees of success. Should more people be paying attention to extremists. Yes.

We get it.

WE ALL AGREE ON THAT POINT.

I am just so sick of the "All Muslims are out to get us argument". They're not. IF you've done any travelling outside of the US, you realize that most people, in most countries, are trying to do one thing (no matter what their religion): live their lives. They can't be bothered with thoughts of world domination, submission of the great devil, or how to plan the downfall of any country. They're trying to put food on the table, raise their kids, and keep their jobs. Period. No matter what the guy in the pulpit says.

In every religion, there are people that show up to church/temple/synagogue/mosque and believe it and live it 100%. There are those who take it to the extreme. There are those who make an appearance cuz it's what they're supposed to do. There are those that make an appearance because they have to. IF everyone in every religion followed the tenets of their religion to the word, we ALL be screwed. But not everyone does, because not everyone can be bothered. A lot of religions say a lot of things about a lot of things. Most people listen, say, "That's nice.", or "Hmmm, interesting.", or "Whatever...", and go on about their day.

"The Muslims are coming" is getting old. Some of them are. We're working on it. The rest could probably give a flying f*ck. (Pardon my language)

As for my use of radical instead of orthodox...whatever. Radical, extremist, ultra orthodox, medium strength orthodox, orthodox, isolationist, fundamentalist Islamists hate us. And they always will. And they are in the minority. And as I said, we're working on it.

I hate that this rant is the last thing I post before my vacation, but such is life. I'll check back in sometime around late September.

**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. **

Don't post an article in which the author himself states that "The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility", and then say that contrary to the author's assertions, peaceful Muslims don't exist. It comes off as hypocritical.

**I'm not saying there are not any, i'm pointing out that that whatever the number globally, they are mostly silent. Those that aren't mostly live the lives of mob informants, even in europe or north america.**

The problem is that the extremists are more visible than their peaceful brethren. Depending on who's numbers you use, there are between .700 billion and 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. IF they were ALL extremists bent on the destruction of the western world, the speed at which they would accomplish this mission would accelerate exponentially.

**Again, i'm not saying ALL.**

Are there Muslims who hate us? Yes. Are there Muslims willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our way of life? Yes.

Are we trying to deal with them? Yes, with varying degrees of success. Should more people be paying attention to extremists. Yes.

We get it.

WE ALL AGREE ON THAT POINT.

**I'm glad we can all agree on this point.**

I am just so sick of the "All Muslims are out to get us argument". They're not. IF you've done any travelling outside of the US, you realize that most people, in most countries, are trying to do one thing (no matter what their religion): live their lives. They can't be bothered with thoughts of world domination, submission of the great devil, or how to plan the downfall of any country. They're trying to put food on the table, raise their kids, and keep their jobs. Period. No matter what the guy in the pulpit says.

**During the heights of Hitler's power, most Germans weren't nazis. Not much solace in knowing that for the internal/external victims of the nazi war machine.**

In every religion, there are people that show up to church/temple/synagogue/mosque and believe it and live it 100%. There are those who take it to the extreme. There are those who make an appearance cuz it's what they're supposed to do. There are those that make an appearance because they have to. IF everyone in every religion followed the tenets of their religion to the word, we ALL be screwed. But not everyone does, because not everyone can be bothered. A lot of religions say a lot of things about a lot of things. Most people listen, say, "That's nice.", or "Hmmm, interesting.", or "Whatever...", and go on about their day.

"The Muslims are coming" is getting old. Some of them are. We're working on it. The rest could probably give a flying f*ck. (Pardon my language)

As for my use of radical instead of orthodox...whatever. Radical, extremist, ultra orthodox, medium strength orthodox, orthodox, isolationist, fundamentalist Islamists hate us. And they always will. And they are in the minority. And as I said, we're working on it.

I hate that this rant is the last thing I post before my vacation, but such is life. I'll check back in sometime around late September.

SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLYWhy so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified

BY BERNARD LEWISThe Roots of Muslim Rage

If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.

An interesting observation, but I believe Christianity has been watered down. I am not sure Church and State are "distinct". Dating from Biblical times, civil disobedience was promoted if the word of the LORD was different than that of the government. The Crusades again tried to impose Christianity upon the Middle East.

Christians are commanded to "make disciples of ALL nations and ethnic groups. And Jesus commanded, either you are gathering with ME or you are against ME. Many Christian theologians have said that Christians have a clear choice to accept God's blessing and love or His wrath as the price of rebellion against HIS will in government here on earth. Either you follow his word or you are damned. And it is your duty to spread his word...

In Palms it says, "The earth is the LORDs and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." And, "Let them know that you whose name is the LORD that you alone are the most high over the earth. Clearly, the LORD is a higher power and should be obeyed versus government.

And in Matthew 28: 18-19 "And Jesus came and said to them, ALL authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of ALL nations, baptizing them...

And in 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, "Casting down imaginations and everything high that exalteth itself against the knowledge of GOD and bringing into captivity every thought to the OBEDIENCE of Christ."

My point; if your read the Bible, it is actually rather aggressive; "either you are for ME or against ME!" And backing it up, especially in the Old Testament there are numerous examples of the LORD striking down or destroying those that oppose him or his word.

Yes, render on to Caesar that which is Caesar'a and unto the LORD that which is the LORD's. But the point, IF there is a conflict, ALWAYS obey the LORD, forget about Caesar.

While the Obama coronation proceeds apace in Denver, it is in Chicago that Americans are getting a disturbing demonstration of his thuggish methods of stifling criticism.

Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Harvard-educated social anthropologist and frequent contributor to National Review, among other publications. He is widely respected for his meticulous research and measured commentary. For months, he has been doing the job the mainstream media refuses to do: examining the background and public record of Barack Obama, the first-term senator Democrats are about to make their nominee for president despite the shallowness of his experience and achievement.

Kurtz has written extensively, and with characteristic attention to factual detail, about Obama’s early career as a “community organizer,” his cultivation of benefactors in the most radical cauldrons of Chicago politics, his long-time pastor’s immersion in Black Liberation Theology, his ties to anti-American zealots, and the years in the Illinois state legislature this self-styled agent of change spent practicing the by-the-numbers left-wing politics of redistribution and race-consciousness, remaining soft on crime and extreme on abortion.

This has led Kurtz, naturally, to scrutinize the relationship between Obama and one of his early political sponsors, William Ayers. Ayers, as we have previously detailed, is a confessed terrorist who, having escaped prosecution due to surveillance violations that came to light during his decade on the lam after a bombing spree, landed an influential professorship in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As he has made clear several times before and after helping to launch Obama’s political career, Ayers remains defiantly proud of bombing the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, and other targets. He expresses regret only that he didn’t do more. Far from abandoning his radical politics, he has simply changed methods: the classroom, rather than the detonator, is now his instrument for campaigning against an America he portrays as racist and imperialist.

Obama supporters risibly complain that shining a light on the Obama/Ayers relationship is a “smear” and smacks of “guilt by association.” A presidential candidate’s choice to associate himself with an unrepentant terrorist would be highly relevant in any event — does anyone think the Obamedia would keep mum if John McCain had a long-standing relationship with David Duke or an abortion-clinic bomber?

But we are talking about more than a mere “association.”

Bluntly, Obama has lied about his relationship with Ayers, whom he now dismisses as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Ayers and Obama have made joint appearances together; they have argued together for “reforms” of the criminal justice system to make it more criminal-friendly; Obama gushed with praise for Ayers’ 1997 polemical book on the Chicago courts; and they sat together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing enterprise that distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their ideological allies. Most significant, they worked closely together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

The CAC was a major education reform project, proposed by Ayers, which was underwritten by a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, complemented by another $100 million in private and public funding. The project ran for about five years, beginning in 1995. As the liberal researcher Steve Diamond has recounted, Ayers ran its operational arm, the “Chicago School Reform Collaborative.” Obama, then a 33-year-old, third-year associate at a small law firm, having no executive experience, was brought in to chair the board of directors, which oversaw all “fiscal matters.”

By the time the CAC’s operations were wound down in 2001 it had doled out more than $100 million in grants but had failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools. What little is known about the grants Obama oversaw is troubling. As Diamond relates, one of the first CAC awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by Ayers and was then headed by Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June after Diamond called attention to them.

The CAC records, said to comprise 70 linear feet of files, have long been maintained at the library of the UIC, the public university where Ayers teaches. This summer, Kurtz made an appointment to review them and, after being assured access, was blocked from seeing them by library administrators, who stammered about needing permission from the “donor” — whom they declined to identify. Kurtz energetically raised public awareness to the stonewalling, and the library finally relented this week. That is, as Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democrats’ nomination tonight, the records of his only significant executive experience just became available for review on Tuesday.

Kurtz began his review, and on Wednesday was invited on Milt Rosenberg’s radio program to discuss it. Rosenberg is a Chicago institution. His program, “Extension 720,” has aired for more than 30 years — a civil forum where knowledgeable guests from across the political spectrum discuss important issues in revealing two-hour interviews. What happened Wednesday night was stunning, as even the normally unflappable Rosenberg observed.

The Obama campaign — which has emissaries appearing everywhere — declined Rosenberg’s invitation to have a representative appear on the program and respond to Kurtz’s factual assertions. The campaign did, however, issue an “Obama Action Wire” that encouraged supporters to contact the program (telephone information was provided) and use scripted “talking points” to disrupt Kurtz’s appearance, which it deemed “unacceptable.” As the Politico’s Ben Smith reported, the campaign also urged supporters to demand that Rosenberg scrap the appearance of Kurtz, whom the campaign libeled as a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin.” The rant was reminiscent of the work of the left-wing media “watch-dog” Media Matters for America.

Other than denigrating Kurtz for being conservative, Obama’s operatives have provided no response to the substance of his claims. In their only pretense of engaging him, they accuse him of telling “a flat out lie” that Ayers recruited Obama for the CAC. Though it is a reasonable inference that Ayers recruited Obama, the careful Kurtz has stopped short of making it — observing only that Obama offers no explanation of how he was recruited if not through Ayers, his friend and the CAC’s driving force.

The station, WGN, has made a stream of the broadcast available online, here, and it has to be heard to be believed. Obama’s robotic legions dutifully jammed the station’s phone lines and inundated the program with emails, attacking Kurtz personally. Pressed by Rosenberg to specify what inaccuracies Kurtz was guilty of, caller after caller demurred, mulishly railing that “we just want it to stop,” and that criticism of Obama was “just not what we want to hear as Americans.” Remarkably, as Obama sympathizers raced through their script, they echoed the campaign’s insistence that it was Rosenberg who was “lowering the standards of political discourse” by having Kurtz on, rather than the campaign by shouting him down.

Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.

Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you’ve ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you’d known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still “makes me want to puke”?

Barack Obama has.

An organization called the American Issues Project, backed by Dallas investor Harold Simmons, is running a campaign ad which highlights Obama’s troubling relationship with William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the Weathermen terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s.

The Obama campaign’s rejoinder is three-pronged: The first shot was an Obama response ad, which fails to offer any substantive explanation of why Obama maintains ties to Ayers. Obama’s second move was to launch a heavy-handed effort to pressure television stations into rejecting the ad by promising financial retaliation against the stations and their advertisers — which effort has apparently succeeded in intimidating Fox and CNN. The capper is a desperate call for the Justice Department to muzzle political speech through the prospect of a criminal investigation — a demand that provides a disturbing sneak peak into what life would be like under an Obama Justice Department.

Needless to say, none of this is justified. If Obama has a good explanation for his ties to Ayers, he ought to give it. In the meantime, raising questions about that relationship is entirely legitimate.

Obama’s campaign has acknowledged that the candidate and Ayers are friends. Though Obama has more recently minimized Ayers as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” it is clear that the relationship was much deeper than that. Ayers and his fellow-terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn (who has spoken admiringly of the infamous Manson Family murders), are icons in Chicago’s hard-left circles, to which Obama sought entrée as a young “community organizer.” In 1995, they hosted a fundraiser that helped launch his career in Chicago politics.

Ayers has never abandoned his indictment of America as an imperialist hotbed of racism and economic exploitation. He has merely shifted methods from violent extortion to academic indoctrination. Through his perch as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he has been a ceaseless critic of the criminal-justice system (he is essentially opposed to imprisoning even the most violent criminals) and a proponent of what he calls “education reform” but what is actually the use of the classroom to proselytize for the Left’s political agenda.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers’ polemic on the Chicago court system, “a searing and timely account.” Michelle Obama, then a dean at the University of Illinois, invited Ayers to participate in a panel with her husband, then a state senator who, the program explained, was “working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.”

Obama apologists dismiss all this as “guilt by association” based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.

In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama’s only significant executive experience is just beginning.

The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.

In the 1970s the Obama family became friendly with Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987), a black writer and fellow Hawaiian resident. Davis wrote for the Honolulu Record (a Communist newspaper) and was a known member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He soon became the young Barack Obama's mentor and advisor.

In Dreams From My Father, Obama writes about Davis but does not reveal the latter's full name, identifying him only as "a poet named Frank" -- a man with much "hard-earned knowledge" who had known "some modest notoriety once" but was now "pushing eighty." (Several sources -- including Professor Gerald Horne, Dr. Kathryn Takara, and libertarian writer Trevor Loudon -- have confirmed that Obama's "Frank" was indeed Frank Marshall Davis.)

Obama in his book recounts how, just prior to heading off to Occidental College (in California) in 1979, he spent some time with "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self." Obama writes that "Frank" told him that college was merely "an advanced degree in compromise," and cautioned the young man not to "start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh--."

Supporting moderation in all things Islamic may seem like a no-brainer, but woe betide the policymaker who tries to turn a plausible idea into a workable strategy.

FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty ImagesCategorize this: Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi wants Egyptians to pray less, but he also supports suicide bombings against Israelis.Of all the cures commonly proposed for the many ailments afflicting the Middle East, there is one tonic nearly everyone seems to agree on: boosting moderate Islam.

It sounds eminently reasonable. If Islamic extremism is the problem, moderate Islam must be the solution. It follows that Western governments should therefore find ways to make the moderates more powerful and encourage the extremists to become more moderate. Allow Islamists to compete and accumulate power, the argument goes, and they will have little incentive to radicalize. Furthermore, assuming the mundane tasks of day-to-day governance will compel even the most extreme groups to focus more on filling potholes than on destroying the Great Satan.

But this belief is dead wrong. Not only is it impossible to agree on a working definition of the word “moderate,” but there is scant evidence that extremists really do moderate once they assume power.

Consider, for example, Hezbollah. The Shiite organization provides state-like services such as education and healthcare for the people of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. The organization, which has had representatives in the Lebanese Parliament since 1992, has often demonstrated a surprising degree of pragmatism. It took part in a May 2005 electoral alliance with several of its adversaries in order to maximize electoral returns in crucial districts. Just a few months earlier, during Lebanon’s “independence uprising,” which pushed Hezbollah’s ally, Syria, out of Lebanon, the organization struck a tone of national unity.

But this spring, Hezbollah revealed the extent to which it remains a militant group. Its cadres took over west Beirut in a powerful display of force intended to show that it has no intention of giving up its guns. Much of Hezbollah’s political power is based on the potent idea of “national resistance” to Israeli aggression. If Hezbollah disarmed, it would be no different from Lebanon’s myriad political factions jockeying for advantage. It is precisely the organization’s militancy that provides Hezbollah with a significant political advantage over its rivals. Why give that up?

The same can be said of Hamas. Two years after its electoral victory, a year after its forcible takeover of Gaza, and despite reported strains and splits within the organization, there are few signs that the Palestinian Islamist group has moderated. The clearest sign that Hamas had altered its worldview would be to accept the international community’s conditions. But why would it? If Hamas were to accept Israel’s right to exist, renounce armed struggle, and honor previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, it would cease being Hamas and effectively become a shadow of its rival, Fatah. The Islamists have not only beaten Fatah on the battlefield, but have also, and more importantly, sold a winning narrative about the ineffectiveness of dialogue with Israel. In Palestinian politics, bowing to international demands is hardly rational.

The other common, but misleading argument about moderate Islam asserts that if only the voices of moderation were given broader exposure, the extremist ideologies of al Qaeda and other groups would find fewer adherents. Although this seems sensible, good luck trying to define “moderate Islam.”

Take Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential TV star in the Arab world. His weekly Al Jazeera show, Sharia and Life, attracts millions of viewers. Qaradawi holds progressive positions on family law, the status of women, and political reform. He recently told Egyptian government employees to “pray less” to improve their productivity. Many Arabs regard him as staunchly moderate. Yet the sheikh has also placed his theological imprimatur on suicide bombings against Israelis, arguing that since all Israelis serve in the military at one time or another, they are all legitimate targets. For those analysts who call for support of moderate Islam, it is hard to believe Qaradawi is whom they have in mind.

Or take Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Inside the Beltway, many Middle East hands are quietly rooting for the ayatollah and former president to win the next Iranian presidential election. Sure, he seems like a moderate in comparison to the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Rafsanjani is the guy who once implored Iranians to kill Westerners wherever they could find them, declaring, “It is not difficult to kill Americans or Frenchmen. It is a bit difficult to kill [Israelis]. But there are so many [Americans and Frenchmen] everywhere in the world.”

If there was ever a problem in defining moderate Islam, however, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) epitomizes it. The party seems to be the paragon of moderate Islamism, undertaking a wide range of reforms and staking its political legacy on Ankara’s entry into the European Union. Yet, Turkey’s archsecularists and a fair number of analysts in the West regard the party with deep suspicion. Citing the AKP’s recent effort to lift the ban on women wearing head scarves at publicly funded universities as only the most egregious example, they argue that the party’s real agenda is to Islamize Turkish society. Whose side should the United States take here?

Given the wildly different criteria for what constitutes “a moderate,” policymakers will run in circles trying to determine who is a moderate and worthy of support, and who is not. One person’s moderate is another person’s radical, and another person’s moderate is little more than a patsy of the West. A policy built on support for moderate Islam is only asking for trouble.

A smarter position is to avoid theological discussions altogether. As with all faiths, there will be heated debates between competing groups within Islam over the proper interpretation of sacred texts and the relationship between religion and politics. Yet because these arguments are so opaque to outsiders, policymakers should resist the urge to jump in. Given that moderation is in the eye of the beholder, Washington should not have an ideological litmus test for whom it wishes to engage. Rather, policymakers should focus on identifying those who can contribute pragmatic solutions to the many problems we confront in the region, “moderate” or not.

Steven A. Cook is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLYWhy so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified

BY BERNARD LEWISThe Roots of Muslim Rage

If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.

An interesting observation, but I believe Christianity has been watered down. I am not sure Church and State are "distinct". Dating from Biblical times, civil disobedience was promoted if the word of the LORD was different than that of the government. The Crusades again tried to impose Christianity upon the Middle East.

Christians are commanded to "make disciples of ALL nations and ethnic groups. And Jesus commanded, either you are gathering with ME or you are against ME. Many Christian theologians have said that Christians have a clear choice to accept God's blessing and love or His wrath as the price of rebellion against HIS will in government here on earth. Either you follow his word or you are damned. And it is your duty to spread his word...

In Palms it says, "The earth is the LORDs and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." And, "Let them know that you whose name is the LORD that you alone are the most high over the earth. Clearly, the LORD is a higher power and should be obeyed versus government.

**Does this mean christians should create a theocratic state? That's a huge leap.**

And in Matthew 28: 18-19 "And Jesus came and said to them, ALL authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of ALL nations, baptizing them...

**Which in general christians interpret as requiring missionary work, including feeding the poor, clothing them, educating them and tending to the sick. Not imposing a Christian theology.**

And in 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, "Casting down imaginations and everything high that exalteth itself against the knowledge of GOD and bringing into captivity every thought to the OBEDIENCE of Christ."

My point; if your read the Bible, it is actually rather aggressive; "either you are for ME or against ME!" And backing it up, especially in the Old Testament there are numerous examples of the LORD striking down or destroying those that oppose him or his word.

Yes, render on to Caesar that which is Caesar'a and unto the LORD that which is the LORD's. But the point, IF there is a conflict, ALWAYS obey the LORD, forget about Caesar.

Perhaps the Koran has good and bad as well?

Is it really that different?

Yes, it's very different. Jesus specifically resisted earthly power. His disciples wanted to form an army to push out the Romans. Jesus told them his kingdom was in the spiritual realm, not the earth. Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan, who offered him all earthly wealth and power. Christian theology recognizes the divide of the physical/material from the spiritual.

Islam recognizes no division. Mohammed was a military/political leader who had people murdered for daring to make fun of him. He married a 6 year old girl, robbed caravans and tortured his enemies to death. Muslims consider him to be a perfect human being, an example of how to live one's life as a muslim. The early "revelations" from allah were pretty benign for the most part, including "There is no compulsion in religion" often touted by those who don't understand the theology, or those wishing to deceive non-muslims. Those tolerant, non-violent parts of the qu'ran were from when Mohammed was powerless. Once he had an army, the earlier verses were abrogated by the verses commanding that non-muslims were to be made to bow to a islamic theocracy.

GM; It seems odd for me to be defending Islam and "criticizing Christianity since I am a practicing Christian, truly believe in God's power and attend Church on most Sundays.That said, I beg to differ with your conclusions/questions/comments.

To ignore God's (Christian God) Law and make your own is also not acceptable is classic Christian theology.

I am not a theologian, but I'll try to express my opinion. However, I think if your read the Bible, a theocratic state is thought to be ideal. Israel is a theocratic state; while perhaps not Christians, the Old Testament has a strong influence. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) at one time and I bet even today if asked privately would support a Christian theocratic state. Our founding fathers decided not to be a Christian Nation, but rather a nation for all religions; rather wise of them.

And "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them..." has nothing to do with feeding the poor, tending to the sick, etc.albeit all good. It is very clear, MAKE DISCIPLES all nations, i.e. convert them to Christianity period. That is the sole objective of missionary work; feeding the poor, educating them, tending to the sick gives them the inside track to conversion, but their objective is to convert people. The rest is just a means to an end.

Yes, Jesus resisted earthly power; he looked upon his power as absolute far greater than any earthly power. As for material things, they simply are not needed if you have the Lord in your heart and look forward to heaven; your final reward. Live a good life, fight for the Lord, make disciples of all nations and you will be rewarded in heaven; is that much different than Islam?

I am not an expert on the Qu'ran (I read it a long time ago and need to do again), but then again, the Bible, especially the Old Testament is full of versus and chapters telling how God punished the disbelieving. Actually, especially in the Old Testament, God is Love, but God is also a God of wrath; don't mess with him or oppose him or thousands will die and not a tear will be shed.

The Bible has become watered down. But if you simply read the Bible, it's a "you are with Me or against Me" story; period; it is very black and white. Those that are not with Me and don't believe in Me and/or have a false God are condemned to Hell. And no tears are to be shed for them. And if one city after another of non believers is destroyed, well, that's their fault for not believing and following God's word. And in the Bible a lot of cities of non believers were destroyed by the Lord.

That being said, I am truly grateful for the wisdom of our founding fathers not to make the U.S. a Christian Nation, but rather a nation that welcomes and tolerates all faiths. I do not think any state should be a theocratic state, yet like Israel, I understand the attraction.

GM; It seems odd for me to be defending Islam and "criticizing Christianity since I am a practicing Christian, truly believe in God's power and attend Church on most Sundays.That said, I beg to differ with your conclusions/questions/comments.

To ignore God's (Christian God) Law and make your own is also not acceptable is classic Christian theology.

I am not a theologian, but I'll try to express my opinion. However, I think if your read the Bible, a theocratic state is thought to be ideal. Israel is a theocratic state; while perhaps not Christians,

**Israel is a parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. Most Israelis are secular Jews.**

the Old Testament has a strong influence. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) at one time and I bet even today if asked privately would support a Christian theocratic state. Our founding fathers decided not to be a Christian Nation, but rather a nation for all religions; rather wise of them.

And "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them..." has nothing to do with feeding the poor, tending to the sick, etc.albeit all good. It is very clear, MAKE DISCIPLES all nations, i.e. convert them to Christianity period. That is the sole objective of missionary work; feeding the poor, educating them, tending to the sick gives them the inside track to conversion, but their objective is to convert people. The rest is just a means to an end.

**I disagree. I've spoken to more than a few that have gone on missions and they tend to cite such things as:

"On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"**

Yes, Jesus resisted earthly power; he looked upon his power as absolute far greater than any earthly power. As for material things, they simply are not needed if you have the Lord in your heart and look forward to heaven; your final reward. Live a good life, fight for the Lord, make disciples of all nations and you will be rewarded in heaven; is that much different than Islam?

**Yes, Mohammed created a political-theological entity with the mandate to make all submit to islam.**

I am not an expert on the Qu'ran (I read it a long time ago and need to do again), but then again, the Bible, especially the Old Testament is full of versus and chapters telling how God punished the disbelieving. Actually, especially in the Old Testament, God is Love, but God is also a God of wrath; don't mess with him or oppose him or thousands will die and not a tear will be shed.

**The key difference being that in Christianity (at least modern christianity), humans are not tasked with being direct agents of god's wrath. If god chooses to unleash biblical plagues, christians aren't expected to brew up bioweapons to fulfill god's desires. Reading the qu'ran without reading the sunna and ahadith and commentaries doesn't lend to getting a good grasp of islamic theology.**

The Bible has become watered down. But if you simply read the Bible, it's a "you are with Me or against Me" story; period; it is very black and white. Those that are not with Me and don't believe in Me and/or have a false God are condemned to Hell. And no tears are to be shed for them. And if one city after another of non believers is destroyed, well, that's their fault for not believing and following God's word. And in the Bible a lot of cities of non believers were destroyed by the Lord.

**There is a big difference between the old testament and the new theologically. And again, modern christianity does not teach that christianity should be spread at swordpoint. Islam has been spread at swordpoint since it's inception and is being spread around the world by violence, as we speak.**

That being said, I am truly grateful for the wisdom of our founding fathers not to make the U.S. a Christian Nation, but rather a nation that welcomes and tolerates all faiths. I do not think any state should be a theocratic state, yet like Israel, I understand the attraction.

**Again, Israel is a secular parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. A core element of christian theology that allows for freedom of religion is the concept of free will. God gives free will and thus humans are free to accept or reject him. Allah does not grant free will.**

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

[**Israel is a parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. Most Israelis are secular Jews.**

**I disagree. I've spoken to more than a few that have gone on missions and they tend to cite such things as:

"On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"**

I disagree: I think you misunderstood. While food is nice and so is water/wine, and that may help conversions, however, the Kingdom of heaven is for those who believe; period. How "nice" you are is just frosting on the cake, but "believe in me and you will be saved". And so you can do all the good works you want, but if you don't truly believe and follow the Lord, you are damned. It is very cut and dried; there is no grey. That being said, if you truly believe, then you will help the hungry and thirsty and those that are fed and given water may be more prone to believe. But the point is without belief, regardless of all your good works, you are going to hell. Nobody gets invited to heaven without belief regardless of what good works they did.

As for Israel, is it truly a parliamentary democracy"? hmmm I am a big fan of Israel, I only wish them well, but a true "democracy" it is not. If that was true, then the Palestinians should soon be in charge; one man one vote? Isn't that a democracy? And while "most Israelis are secular Jews" they are still Jews. It is a Jewish State. I think most Israelis would admit they are a Jewish State and be proud of it.

Crafty, perhaps you could move the last four to six posts to the Israel forum? And perhaps reference posts even further above of GM's regarding democracy in Israel?This will move it to the top of the list and perhaps attract Rachel's attention? As well as othersinterested in Israel but perhaps not Obama.Or?

I thought I would pass on a link to a satirical Obama song on my space. I know the composer. He is trying to get it out to as many people as he can. He is not wanting anything for it just an audience. Enjoy. Feel free to download it and pass it around or give out the link.

ObamaTax 3.0September 9, 2008; Page A24The good news is that Barack Obama said on ABC Sunday that he might not go through with his plans to increase taxes.

The bad news is that the economy has to be mired in recession to avoid the largest tax increase in the nation's history.

Our check of the Dow Jones Factiva database suggests that other than viewers of ABC's "This Week," only three or four newspapers carried an account of Senator Obama's amended tax plan. While it's possible that the story of a deferred tax increase could shock the media into paralysis, we take it as an encouraging sign. The education of Barack Obama continues apace.

For the record, here is what he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "So even if we're in a recession next January, you come into office, you'll still go through with your tax increases?"

Senator Obama: "No, no, no, no, no. What I've said, George, is that even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts. That's my priority."

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "But not the increases?"

Senator Obama: "I think we've got to take a look and see where the economy is. The economy is weak right now. The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers indicates that we're fragile. I want to accelerate those tax cuts through a second stimulus package, get more money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, see if we can stabilize the housing market, and then we're going to have to reevaluate at the beginning of the year to see what kind of hole we're in."

* * *Even individuals staring down the barrel of Mr. Obama's tax increases should not wish for an economic recession to give them a reprieve. The relevant point is that it was early last year, when the "Bush economy" was still humming, that Senator Obama first proposed pushing taxes sharply upward on "the wealthy," while giving what he calls "tax cuts" (actually they are credits, not rate reductions) to "the middle class."

At the time, Mr. Obama was the long shot in the Democratic Presidential sweepstakes, and it made some political sense to reassure the party's intensely liberal primary voters with class-war boilerplate on taxes.

Under ObamaTax 1.0, he would have repealed all the Bush tax cuts, lifted the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, put the top marginal rate up to 39.8% and raised the rate on capital gains and dividends to at least 25% from 15% now. The official campaign line was that tax rates really don't matter to economic growth.

Summer arrived, the Clinton challenge was history and with the general election ahead came ObamaTax 2.0. It posited that the top rate on capital gains now would be 20%, described on this page August 14 by economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee as "almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986." This was progress.

Now with the big vote less than 60 days off and John McCain pounding him as a tax-raiser and pulling ahead in some polls, the Democratic nominee has decided to release ObamaTax 3.0, the most interesting upgrade so far. If the economy is still weak in January, a President Obama might defer all of the planned increases.

Several interpretations of this shift are possible, none of which reflect badly on Senator Obama's political learning curve.

At the bloodless level of simply wishing to win, the Obama camp may have concluded that in the sprint to November it is a losing strategy to be the election's only doctrinaire tax raiser. A tight race tends to focus political minds, and none forget Walter Mondale's catastrophic promise in his 1984 acceptance speech: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

Beyond this lies the economic reality of jacking up income, investment and payroll taxes on "the wealthy" amid a flat or falling economy. In the standard narrative, these taxpayers exist as fat cats atop hedge funds, banks and megacorporations. Let's toss into the vat the top-tier managers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Beltway's own fat-cat sinecure.

The reality is that the creators of new jobs in the economy are more likely to be rising entrepreneurs or filers under Subchapter S, who typically pay taxes at individual rates. Hanging three or four tax millstones around their productive necks in January if the economy is weak will likely produce unimpressive growth and job numbers in the first year of the new Obama Presidency, and likely beyond. That in turn could drag down the Democrats in Congress who will get credit for voting these higher taxes into law.

Thus Mr. Obama's unambiguous answer Sunday to whether he'd insist on his tax increases if the economy is in an official recession: "No, no, no, no, no." It seems Mr. McCain is right that taxes do matter.

Mr. Obama's most ardent primary supporters may not like it, but we'll take the five "Nos" as evidence that Senator Obama may be learning the difference between liberal doctrine and sensible governance.

Gotta love this. Now we should give a hoot what the "world" thinks. In a way I would be more likely to choose what the world does not want. I vote for a President for my country not for the benefit of other countries. What a joke. Does any one else question the motives of this stuff - I believe the world wants OBama because he is weak and will cave to their wishes. Seems simple to me. So if anything we should not vote for him based on this. This should be twisted around by the cans.

****World wants Obama as president: pollPosted 4 hours 34 minutes ago

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.

All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

More than 22,000 people were questioned by pollster GlobeScan in countries ranging from Australia to India and across Africa, Europe and South America.

The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.

"Large numbers of people around the world clearly like what Barack Obama represents," GlobeScan chairman Doug Miller said.

"Given how negative America's international image is at present, it is quite striking that only one in five think a McCain presidency would improve on the Bush administration's relations with the world."

In the United States, three polls taken since the Republican party convention ended on Thursday (local time) show Senator McCain with a lead of 1 to 4 percentage points - within the margin of error - and two others show the two neck-and-neck.

The countries most optimistic that an Obama presidency would improve relations were America's NATO allies, including Australia (62 per cent).

A similar BBC/Globescan poll conducted ahead of the 2004 U.S presidential election found that, of 35 countries polled, 30 would have preferred to see Democratic nominee John Kerry, rather than the incumbent George Bush, who was elected.

A total of 23,531 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the United States were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone in July and August 2008 for the poll.

The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us. Those questions were not stilled by the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.

Martin Kozlowski To be sure, the Delaware senator is a man of unfailing decency and deep legislative experience; and his foreign policy preferences are reflective of the liberal internationalist outlook that once prevailed in the Democratic Party. To his honor and good name, Sen. Biden took a leading role in pushing for the use of American military power in the Balkans when the Muslims of Bosnia were faced with grave dangers a dozen years ago. Patriotism does not embarrass this man in the way it does so many in the liberal elite. But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.

So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. In their view, we can make our way in the world without the encumbrance of "hard" power. We would offer other nations apologies for the way we carried ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, and the foreign world would be glad for a reprieve from the time of American certitude.

The starkness of the choice now before the country is fully understood when compared to that other allegedly seminal election of 1960. But the legend of Camelot and of the New Frontier exaggerates the differences between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. A bare difference of four years separated the two men (Nixon had been born in 1913, Kennedy in 1917). Both men had seen service in the Navy in World War II. Both were avowed Cold Warriors. After all, Kennedy had campaigned on the missile gap -- in other words the challenger had promised a tougher stance against the Soviet Union. (Never mind the irony: There was a missile gap; the U.S. had 2,000 missiles, the Soviet Union a mere 67.)

The national consensus on America's role abroad, and on the great threats facing it, was firmly implanted. No great cultural gaps had opened in it, arugula was not on the menu, and the elites partook of the dominant culture of the land; the universities were then at one with the dominant national ethos. The "disuniting of America" was years away. American liberalism was still unabashedly tethered to American nationalism.

We are at a great remove from that time and place. Globalization worked its way through the land, postmodernism took hold of the country's intellectual life. The belief in America's "differentness" began to give way, and American liberalism set itself free from the call of nationalism. American identity itself began to mutate.

The celebrated political scientist Samuel Huntington, in "Who Are We?," a controversial book that took up this delicate question of American identity, put forth three big conceptions of America: national, imperial and cosmopolitan. In the first, America remains America. In the second, America remakes the world. In the third, the world remakes America. Back and forth, America oscillated between the nationalist and imperial callings. The standoff between these two ideas now yields to the strength and the claims of cosmopolitanism. It is out of this new conception of America that the Obama phenomenon emerges.

The "aloofness" of Mr. Obama that has become part of the commentary about him is born of this cultural matrix. Mr. Obama did not misspeak when he described union households and poorer Americans as people clinging to their guns and religion; he was overheard sharing these thoughts with a like-minded audience in San Francisco.

Nor was it an accident that, in a speech at Wesleyan University, he spoke of public service but excluded service in the military. The military does not figure prominently in his world and that of his peers. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention, as was the case on the campaign trail, he spoke of his maternal grandfather's service in Patton's army. But that experience had not been part of his own upbringing.

When we elect a president, we elect a commander in chief. This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling. That is why Eisenhower overwhelmed Stevenson, Reagan's swagger swept Carter out of office, Bush senior defeated Dukakis, etc.

The exception was Bill Clinton, with his twin victories over two veterans of World War II. We had taken a holiday from history -- but 9/11 awakened us to history's complications. Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton feigned the posture of a muscular American warrior, and carried the working class with her?

The warrior's garb sits uneasily on Barack Obama's shoulders: Mr. Obama seeks to reassure Americans that he and his supporters are heirs of Roosevelt and Kennedy; that he, too, could order soldiers to war, stand up to autocracies and rogue regimes. But the widespread skepticism about his ability to do so is warranted.

The crowds in Berlin and Paris that took to him knew their man. He had once presented his willingness to negotiate with Iran as the mark of his diplomacy, the break with the Bush years and the Bush style. But he stepped back from that pledge, and in a blatant echo of President Bush's mantra on Iran, he was to say that "no options would be off the table" when dealing with Iran. The change came on a visit to Israel, the conversion transparent and not particularly convincing.

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

Mr. McCain, well, he's not particularly articulate on this question. But he shares the widespread attitude of broad swaths of the country that are not consumed with worries about America's standing in foreign lands. Mr. McCain is not eager to be loved by foreigners. In November, the country will have a choice between a Republican candidate forged in the verities of the 1950s, and a Democratic rival who walks out of the 1990s.

For Mr. McCain, the race seems a matter of duty and obligation. He is a man taking up this quest after a life of military and public service, the presidency as a capstone of a long career. Mr. McCain could speak with more nuance about the great issues upon us. When it comes to the Islamic world, for example, it's not enough merely to evoke the threat of radical Islamism as the pre-eminent security challenge of our time. But his approach and demeanor have proven their electoral appeal before.

For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications. The lightning overseas trip, the quick briefing, and above all a breezy knowingness. Mr. Obama's way is the way of his peers among the liberal, professional elite.

Once every four years, ordinary Americans go out and choose the standard-bearer of their nationalism. Liberalism has run away with elite culture. Nationalism may be out of fashion in Silicon Valley. But the state -- and its citadel, the presidency -- is an altogether different calling.

Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is also an adjunct research fellow of the Hoover Institution.

Well the mostt recent panicky comments from the Bama man ain't helping his case that he is ready to lead.

This is not made up. This is not a lie. He said it. It came straight from HIS mouth. This guy can't take the heat or the truth about himself. And I don't believe a guy who calls Wright his father figure and mentor actually loves this country as much as he actually loves himself. And that goes for Michelle too. Now if only McCain can continue to show emotion and passion like he did in his speech and Palin doesn't mess up - the game is over. If you asked me this before the Rep convention I would have never thought it. It is a miracle - so far - but still have a long way to go. As Mark Levin says - watch for the last minute political hit on Palin - that she used her influence to get a state trooper fired - he says this will be the Dems October "surprise" hit on Palin. I don't think it will work though.

Calling it "the latest made-up controversy by the John McCain campaign," Obama responded to the Republicans' charge that he was referring to Palin when he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" at a campaign stop Tuesday.

"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics. Enough is enough," he said.

Obama's reference was to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an outside group that in 2004 made unsubstantiated allegations about Democratic nominee John Kerry's decorated military record in Vietnam.

On Tuesday, Obama criticized McCain's economic policies as similar to those of President Bush, saying: "You can put lipstick on a pig ... it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

The McCain campaign contended that the comments were directed at Palin, the GOP's first woman on a presidential ticket. In her acceptance speech last week, she had referred to herself in a joke about lipstick being the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull.

Accusing Obama of "smearing" Palin in "offensive and disgraceful" comments, the McCain campaign demanded an apology — though McCain himself used the folksy metaphor a few times last year, including once to describe Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan.

The McCain campaign on Wednesday issued an Internet ad that said Obama was talking about Palin and said of Obama: "Ready to lead? No. Ready to smear? Yes."

Obama began a discussion of education at a Norfolk high school on Wednesday by assailing McCain's campaign.

"What their campaign has done this morning is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad because they know that it's catnip for the news media," Obama said.

Obama's campaign has accused the GOP camp of engaging in a "pathetic attempt to play the gender card." In an e-mail to reporters Wednesday, the campaign noted two other instances of McCain using the phrase "lipstick on a pig" and its use by other Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl.****

The lipstick - hockey mom - pitbull joke is old and funny because there's truth in it. It's derogatory to the pitbull but only self deprecating to the hockey mom. Parents who commit to kid hockey programs spend thousands a year on ice time, coaching and equipment, drive their SUV's daily at all hours through all weather to the arenas and away games forsaking whatever they would be doing without kids or hockey. When they get there they don't just sit there and clap politely for the nice plays like it's a senior golf event or a slide show at the library. They holler and scream and scold and tell their kids they don't hustle enough while they demand to the coaches their kid deserves more ice time. Same goes for the parents in plenty of other sports. The joke was a headsup to the fact that she was not going to sit pretty next to McCain and stay out of the mix. And she didn't.

Lipstick on a pig is also an old phrase, it's sexist, and both candidates have used it.

The difference was the timing and the crowd instantly got it. McCain's crowd doesn't roar if he calls socialized heathcare a pig or a turkey. Obama's turn of phrase was roll on the floor funny ONLY IF he intended to get moveon.org nasty with his new opponent who recently tweaked him in front of $40 million. Obama didn't intend to do that or have it read that way IMO. It was a gaffe.

Liberals went into a feeding frenzy over George Allen's "Mucaca". He was just trying to put some kind of name on his stalker, but the guy's look was ethnic and the made up name sounded ethnic and the instant news cycle spin turned it into a condescending slur. Sen. Allen was supposed to be the next Reagan. He's out and his replacement is a Dem.

Obama should know that phrase at this time will be taken wrong, he should apologize and find a new cliche. (Doesn't he carry the unabridged cliche collection with him?) Instead this will haunt him.

One etymology I've heard is that the phrase was a '50's term coined to describe an esthetically unpleasing woman who dons a dress and makeup to poorly conceal that fact. IMO, McPalin are overplaying this hand; they should just stand back and let BHO stutter. Indeed, he's starting to come off like a meth freak reciting his mantra: "swift boating," "change," "diversion," "phony," ohhhhhhmmmm.

Think Mark Steyn has it right:

Pig in a poke [Mark Steyn]I agree with Mark K that Governor Palin, who kills elk for breakfast, shouldn't be seen to complain Obama-like about how beastly and mean her opponents are. Years ago in Britain there was a dialogue-free commercial in which a cute chick looked into the camera and put on her lipstick while the soundtrack played some smooth sax instrumental of "Put On A Happy Face". That's what Sarah should do: Put on a happy face.

That said...

If you read Obama's books, you know that his preferred voice is a detached, slightly unknowable cool. He is, in that sense, like an iconic movie star running for president. But, two months out from the big vote, doing a gazillion appearances and interviews a day, you can't get by on just the detached cool, and whatever's underneath starts to show.

We already know that Obama is pretty terrible when he's off the prompter.

We also know that an amazing number of the media-Democrat elite openly loathe Sarah Palin, and everything about her from her alleged Eighties hair to her hillbilly fecundity. Oh, sure, if you press them, they'll talk about per diems and the bridge to nowhere for a bit, but they'd much rather trash her personally - reviling her as both an uptight fundamentalist and a whip-wielding dominatrix in the same publication on the same day. Given what's been expressed publicly by Maureen Dowd, Gloria Steinem et al, is it likely that in private the upper echelons of the Obama campaign are immune to the gleeful contempt for Palin expressed by almost all other prominent "liberals"?

And that's the issue. The problem is not whether Obama's sexist but whether he's disciplined enough to keep the public from glimpsing the less attractive elements of liberal-elite condescension. Where now the iconic cool of the snows of Iowa?

The Dems keep pushing this Swift Boat buzz line as though most Americans are upset about the questions raised about Kerry during the last campaign. I really wonder if anyone but the choir really cares.

And now we hear comparisons of Kerry with McCain as though they are the one in the same because they both admiringly served during VietNam. But that is where the comparison ends. The "Swift Boating" of Kerry was not a criticism of his serving but a criticism of his coming back to the US and denigrating this country, and other service men. McCain never did that. Additionally Kerry also questionably got a purlple heart and some sort of recognition for bravery while he was a Senator for what sounded like a scratch. One thing some Americans may never forgive is someone who has a history of denigrating this country and then later having the nerve to run for the Presidency. Correct me if I am wrong but that is why Kerry lost. And that may be why the Bama loses (if he does). Perhaps more this than his "inexperience".

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday accused Sen. John McCain's campaign of engaging in "lies" and "swift boat politics" in regard to his comment about "lipstick on a pig."

Sen. Barack Obama dismisses GOP criticism about his reference to "lipstick on a pig."

1 of 2 "Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change," Obama said at the start of an education event in Norfolk, Virginia.

"We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.

"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough," he said, referring to how Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched attacks against Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race.

Obama said the McCain campaign was doing the type of thing that makes people "sick and tired of politics." Watch Obama dismiss "the latest made-up controversy" »

Responding to Obama's comments, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, "Barack Obama can't campaign with schoolyard insults and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign.

"His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn't exist."

Don't MissPalin backed 'bridge to nowhere,' then opposed it McCain camp slams Biden on special-needs kids Ticker: Is Palin influencing white women? Obama's heated response came after the McCain campaign said the Democrat owes the GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an apology for invoking an adage on the campaign trail Tuesday: "That's not change," Obama said, saying McCain's policy views were similar to President Bush's. "That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

McCain's campaign said Obama's remarks were offensive and a slap at Palin -- despite the fact that the senator from Arizona used the phrase last year to describe a policy proposal of Sen. Hillary Clinton's. Watch how tensions are rising on the campaign trail »

Within minutes, the McCain campaign announced a conference call focusing on the remark, which it said was a deliberate reference to Palin's line: "You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick." Read more about the "lipstick" controversy

Palin used the line in the opening remarks of her acceptance speech at last week's GOP convention, and she frequently uses it on the campaign trail.

Earlier Wednesday, Obama's campaign announced it was launching "Alaska Mythbusters," a group of Alaskans that the campaign says will "set the record straight" about Palin.

Former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles and Bob Weinstein, mayor of the city that would have been home to the "Bridge to Nowhere," planned to discuss Palin's record in a conference call later Wednesday.

Obama's group comes the day after McCain deployed the "Palin Truth Squad" to fight future attacks on his vice presidential nominee.

It was launched as The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Palin had billed the state a per diem for 312 days she spent at home and requested reimbursement for plane rides and hotel rooms for her husband and children.

The newspaper noted that officials said the claims were justified under existing state regulations. The McCain campaign said that Palin had reduced yearly travel expenses by roughly 80 percent of the amount spent by her predecessor, former Gov. Frank Murkowski.

Meanwhile, after Obama made his remarks criticizing Republicans, he moved on to discussing his plan for the education system. At the Virginia event, Obama repeated proposals he laid out Tuesday, which included doubling funding for charter schools and investing in early-childhood education. Read more about Obama's plan for public education

Obama has put a lot of emphasis on Virginia, a Republican stronghold he hopes to turn blue.

Obama kicked off his general election campaign in Virginia in June.

Virginia hasn't voted for a Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, but for more than a year, Obama's campaign has cited the state's 13 electoral votes as part of its argument that he can reshuffle the electoral map this fall.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine was long considered one of Obama's top vice presidential contenders, and the state played a big role at the Democratic National Convention last month, with Kaine's predecessor, Mark Warner, delivering the keynote address.

Following his Virginia event, Obama was set to tape an appearance for the "Late Show With David Letterman" and then head to Washington to speak before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala.

Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was in New Hampshire for a town hall meeting. New Hampshire is also a tossup state, with four electoral votes at stake.

On the Republican side McCain and Palin were in Fairfax, Virginia, for a rally.

The campaign moved the rally from a northern Virginia high school to a nearby park following complaints from some officials, who said that holding a partisan event on school grounds violated local school board policy.

However, McCain's campaign said Wednesday that the main reason for moving the event was to accommodate the demand for tickets.

I don't remember Kerry "denigrating this country" and later having run for President. Like McCain, I do remember him serving his country and fighting in Vietnam. I do remember Kerry received more than one Purple Heart. And, I do remember he returned to America after serving his country and opposed the war as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. Also, I understand he spoke of atrocities being committed by American soldiers. Perhaps true - I don't know.

Frankly, given that he had served, I found his opposition to the war much more credible than the average "love child" smoking dope and preaching peace. Of course one can oppose war still love your country. Also, one should stand up and criticize atrocities if they are being committed. And one can still honorably run for President having done so. Our freedom includes the right of free speech to oppose government policies that we disagree with. Freedom of speech is basic to our society and it is a very valuable freedom that cannot be found in China, Russia, or many other places in the world today. I don't get your point; of course someone can vocally oppose the war today and still run for president at a later date. And they may be a great president.

Grab the popcorn. We’ve got another joint YAF/Hot Air TV production for you, just in time for the anti-war confab known as “Winter Soldier II” that kicks off in Washington, D.C. tomorrow and runs through Sunday. YAF’s Jason Mattera, our intrepid special correspondent who cornered Jack Murtha in September, is back in the halls of Congress.This week, Jason caught up with the original Winter Soldier, Sen. John Kerry, and confronted him about his unsubstantiated, troop-smearing testimony. Jason also tried to get him to autograph this picture. Watch:

***Here’s the transcript:Opening slate: On January 31, 1971, John Kerry organized the Winter Soldier Investigations, a media event that falsely accused American soldiers of routinely raping, torturing, and murdering innocent Vietnamese civilians.Second slate: From March 13-16, 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War has coordinated a second Winter Soldier Investigations in an effort to assail the U.S. Military in Iraq and Afghanistan.Third slate: On March 11, 2008, Jason Mattera of Young America’s Foundation confronted Senator Kerry (D-MA) about Winter Soldier II and the Senator’s shady past.MATTERA: Hey, Sen. Kerry! Jason Mattera with Young America’s Foundation. How are you?KERRY: Jason. How are you?MATTERA: I was wondering: Do you have any advice for the new group of activists who are organizing Winter Soldier II?KERRY: I haven’t [unintelligble] what they’re doing or where they’re at. I just don’t…MATTERA: Do you think this crop of anti-war activists, do you there’ll be any frauds like Al Hubbard?KERRY: I have no idea. I hope not.MATTERA: Do you think that they will make slanderous accusations–accusing the troops of raping women, pillaging villaging, just like you did to the Fulbright committee?KERRY: Uh, I didn’t make those.MATTERA: You didn’t?Audio clip, John Kerry, 4/22/71: [They told the stories at times] they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.Kerry claims Winter Soldier Investigations were substantiated by further investigation.MATTERA: Did you ever verify those –KERRY (crosstalk): I’ve been misquoted about that hundreds of times.MATTERA: So you never substantiated those charges before you–KERRY: I proposed–I gave them to the committee because I felt that they ought to be investigated and that’s exactly what I said. These are the–many of those charges, incidentally, were subsequently verified by different entities.Slate: No criminal charges were filed as a result of any of the [Army’s Criminal Investigative Division] investigations into Winter Soldier.FrontPageMag.com, February 25, 2008Slate: Much of the testimony that will be heard during the three days could not be corroborated by the Free Press in the ten days it had to run down each account.Detroit Free Press, January 31, 1971MATTERA: Could you sign the picture of the dedication the North Vietnamese created in helping–claiming you helped them win the war?KERRY: No. No.MATTERA: Do you have any thoughts?KERRY (puts hand on Jason’s shoulder): Who do you represent?MATTERA: Young America’s Foundation.KERRY: Ohhh.MATTERA: Does it bother you that the North Vietnamese created a memorial dedicated to you?KERRY: It’s not dedicated to me.Slate: At the Communists War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, John Kerry’s picture hangs in a section dedicated to the anti-war activists who helped the Vietnamese Communists win the Vietnam War.End slate:Reputations ruined.Lives torn apart.Servicemen maligned.We can’t let lies like Kerry’s go unchallenged again.

Pig comment sexist? I wrote that because I find the term to be a visual put-down. How do I say nicely - we aren't talking about farm animals and we aren't talking about supermodels - millions and millions of women not comfortable with their looks put on billions of dollars of makeup/lipstick with millions of hours in front of the mirror and they attain mixed results, to put it lightly. The phrase in question doesn't make me visualize a painted farm animal; it makes me visualize the unpleasant sight of one of these unsuccessful makeover experiments, like one of the male actors in an SNL parody all lipsticked up and in a dress with a false front and a pretend high voice, not pulling off the beauty of an attractive woman.

Guys my age mostly think Palin is hot. But the hate blogs were all over her hair during the speech from another decade and though trimmer than Hillary, she wasn't the exact figure (months after childbirth) as her beauty queen photos. More importantly, feminists think she is a pig or other creature for being a woman and holding non-liberal-feminist views. Obama was NOT directly talking about her but he had VERY recently been talking about her and the crowd instantly got the unintended double-triple meaning, slamming Palin while he was slamming 'failed' policies and apparently pigs. JMHO.

Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age By Online Thursday, September 4, 2008

New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidateBarack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers.

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman WorthyNews.com 9-3-8

In a videotaped interview this year on New York’s all news cable channel NY1, a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious disclosures about Obama. (See Video Clip Below)

Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama.

“I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,” Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter.

“The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas,” Sutton said. “He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama.”

Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama’s application to Harvard Law School?

“He wrote to me about him,” Sutton recalled. “And his introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”

Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour’s advice.

“I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly,” Sutton told NY1.

Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or from whom he was raising money on Obama’s behalf.

A Sutton aide told Newsmax that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide additional comment for this story.

As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from Columbia University inNew York and doing a stint as a community organizer in Chicago.

The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became for the youngObama: “He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.”

The details of Obama’s academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude.

Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim, would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy of the Ivy League law schools.

Khalid al-Mansour a.k.a. Don WardenIn an exclusive interview with Newsmax from his home in San Antonio, Texas, al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get “distorted.”

“I was determined I was never going to be in that situation,” he said. “Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright — in drag! — and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack.”

But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince Alwaleed.

“I am not surprised to learn about this,” said Niger Innis, spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). “It is clear that Barack Obama’s ties to the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years.”

Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel.

A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President GeneralAbdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.

He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star Michael Jackson.

But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s disgraced former pastor.

In a 1995 book, “The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered,” he alleged that the United States was plotting genocide against black Americans.

The first “genocide against the black man began 300 years ago,” he told an audience in Harlem at a book-signing, while a second “genocide” was on the way “to remove 15 million Black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.”

In the 1960s, when he founded the African American Association in the San Francisco Bay area, he was known as Donald Warden.

According to the Social Activism Project at the University of California at Berkley, Warden, a.k.a.Khalid al-Mansour, was the mentor of Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and his cohort, Bobby Seale.

Newton later had a falling out with Warden, who was described in a 1994 book as “the most articulate spokesperson for black nationalism” at the time.

The falling out wasn’t purely political, according to author Hugh Pearson.

“Sometimes Newton and the other members of (Warden’s) security detail got into fights with young whites who didn’t like what Warden had to say about whites. Rather than ‘throw down’ along with the security detail, Warden refused to fight,” Pearson wrote in “Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America.”

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California entered an official statement of appreciation of Warden and his Black Panther colleagues in the African-American Association in the Congressional Record on April 23, 2007.

“Among the founding members (of the Association) were community leaders such as Khalid Al-Mansour(known then as Don Warden); future Judges Henry Ramsey and Thelton Henderson; future Congressman and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and future Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,” the Democratic representative’s statement said.

“Today, the Palestinians are being brutalized like savages,” he told an audience in South Africa. “If you protest you will go to jail, and you may be killed. And they say they are the only democratic country in the Middle East. ... They are lying on God.”

He accused the Jews of “stealing the land the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America.”

The Saudi ConnectionBut al-Mansour’s sponsorship of Obama as a prospective Harvard law student is important for another reason beyond his Islamic and anti-American rhetoric and early Black Panther ties.

At the time Percy Sutton, a former lawyer for Malcolm X and a former business partner of al-Mansour, says he was raising money for Obama’s graduate school education, al-Mansour was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family seeking to do business and exert influence in the United States.

In 1989, for example — just one year after Obama entered Harvard Law School — The Los Angeles Times revealed that al-Mansour had been advising Saudi billionaires Abdul Aziz and Khalid al-Ibrahimin their secret effort to acquire a major stake in prime oceanfront property in Marina del Rey, Calif., through “an elaborate network of corporate shells in California, the Caribbean and Europe.”

At the same time, he was also advising Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in his U.S. investments, and sits on the board of his premier investment vehicle, Kingdom Holdings.

Prince Alwaleed, 53, is the nephew if King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia. Forbes magazine ranked him this year as the 19th richest person on the planet, with a fortune in excess of $23 billion. He owns large chunks of Citigroup and News Corp., the holding company that controls Fox News.

He is best known in the United States for his offer to donate $10 million to help rebuild downtownManhattan after the 9/11 attacks. But after the prince made a public comment suggesting that U.S.policies had contributed to causing the attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani handed back his check.

“I entirely reject that statement,” Giuliani said. “There is no moral equivalent for this (terrorist) act. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”

Since then, Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Foundation has given millions of dollars to Muslim charities in the United States, including several whose leaders have been indicted on terrorism-related charges in federal courts.

He also has given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard and other major U.S. universities, to establish programs in Islamic studies.

The casual statement by Percy Sutton to NY1 is the first time anyone has hinted at a relationship between Obama and the Saudi royal family.

Although al-Mansour glosses over his ties to the Saudi mega-billionaire in some of his public talks, he has represented the Saudi’s interests in the United States, in Britain, and in Africa for more than a quarter century, according to public records.

He told Newsmax that he has personally introduced Prince Alwaleed to “51 of the 53 leaders of Africa,” traveling from country to country on the Saudi prince’s private jet.

He knows virtually every black leader in America, from the business community, to community activists, to the worlds of politics and entertainment.

When Michael Jackson was on the ropes in the mid-1990s following a series of lawsuits by the parents of children accusing him of sexual abuse, al-Mansour introduced him to Prince Alwaleed, whose Kingdom Entertainment signed a joint venture with Jackson in 1996.

“Jackson and Alwaleed became pals in 1994, when a mutual friend from Alwaleed’s college days inCalifornia arranged a lunch meeting aboard the prince’s yacht in Cannes,” Time magazine reported about the new partnership in 1997.

The mutual friend was al-Mansour.

“As a black American, I am exceedingly proud at the American people’s response to Barack Obama’scandidacy,” said CORE’s Niger Innis. “But to deny that he has long-standing ties to left-wing elements in our polity is to deny reality. If you want to be president of the United States, it is not racism if you ask these kind of questions, and he has to come up with an answer, hopefully the truth.”

Sutton gives no clues as to why al-Mansour would be raising money to help Obama go to law school.Obama has said during his campaign that he paid his way through Harvard with student loans.

For Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), these latest revelations about Obama’s ties to Saudi financiers were an important wake-up call.

“To me, this opened up more questions about Barack Obama and his relationship to the Muslim world,” Peterson told Newsmax.

“A lot of people are caught up with the emotional aspect of Barack Obama, the movie star aspect, the false promises that he’s going to take care of everyone and their Mama.”

But when the full story of Obama’s ties to radical preachers such as Wright and to black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan comes out, Peterson believes that Obama’s star power will fade.

“I think there’s more to this story and to Barack Obama than we realize,” Peterson said. “As all the truth comes out before the election, I don’t think he has a chance. I can’t see American’s taking that kind of risk.”

The Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Percy Sutton Reveals Association Between Khalid al-Mansour and Obama at Age 25

Interesting that this sort of analysis is coming from the other side of the pond rather than being homegrown.

Barack Obama under fire for ignoring advice on how to beat John McCain

Barack Obama and his senior advisers are under fire for ignoring the advice of Democratic senators and governors who are concerned that they do not know how to beat John McCain.

By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 9:29PM BST 13 Sep 2008

Mr Obama has never won an electoral contest against a strong Republican candidate

The Democratic presidential candidate's slump in the polls has sparked pointed private criticism that he is squandering a once-in-a-generation chance to win back the White House.Party elders also believe the Obama camp is in denial about warnings from Democratic pollsters that his true standing is four to six points lower than that in published polls because of hidden racism from voters - something that would put him a long way behind Mr McCain.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that senators, governors and union leaders who have experience of winning hard-fought races in swing states have been bombarding Obamas campaign headquarters with telephone calls offering advice. But many of those calls have not been returned.

A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: "These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They're the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won't accept that they are losing and they won't listen."

After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.

Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain.

Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.

Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain's running mate, the Obama camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks.A Democratic National Committee official told The Sunday Telegraph: "I really find it offensive when Democrats ask the Republicans not to be nasty to us, which is effectively what Obama keeps doing. They know thats how the game is played."

Mr Obama tried to answer that critique on Friday when he responded in kind, issuing an attack advert depicting his Republican opponent as out of touch and mocking the 72-year-old Mr McCain's confession that he does not know how to use email.

He rammed home the point during a rally in New Hampshire, pointing out Mr McCains recent admission that he was divorced from some of the challenges of ordinary Americans.Mr Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, called it the first day of the rest of the campaign.

But that was the fourth time in the last nine months that Mr Obamas team have been forced to declare that the gloves are coming off. And Mr Plouffe's dismissal of Democratic doubts as hand-wringing and bed-wetting only served to reinforce the growing doubts about what some see as a bunker mentality among Obamas inner circle - where outside advice, even from highly experienced people, is not welcomed.

The Democratic strategist told The Sunday Telegraph: "They think they know best. They don't return calls. There are governors and senators calling them up with ideas. They don't get back to them.

"These are senior people from the border states and the South who know how to beat Republicans, and they're being ignored. They ignored everyone during the primaries and they came through it, so they think they can do the same again."

Mr Obama has never won an electoral contest against a strong Republican candidate. David Axelrod, his chief strategist has been hailed as a political genius for beating the Clinton machine, but Democrats now point out that he has never run a successful campaign in the heartland states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, which will decide the election. His expertise is in mobilising young, educated and black voters in urban areas.

Mark Cunningham of the New York Post summed up the private views of many: "If it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn't have any idea what it's doing, maybe that's because it doesn't."

Party elders are also studying internal polling material which warns the Obama camp that his true standing is worse than it appears in polls because voters lie to polling companies about their reluctance to vote for a black candidate. The phenomenon is known in the US as the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black candidate for governor of California who lost after leading comfortably in polls.

The strategist said: "I've seen memos where they've been told to factor in four to six points for the Bradley effect, but they're in denial about it.

They say the polls also underestimate the enthusiasm of young voters and African Americans and they believe that balances things out. But that's a wing and a prayer stuff. There's previous evidence for the Bradley effect."

Other Democrats are openly mocking of Mr Obama's much vaunted "50-state strategy", in which he spends money campaigning throughout the US in the hope that it will force Mr McCain to divert funds to previously safe states. Critics say a utopian belief in bringing the nation together has trumped the cold electoral calculus that is necessary to triumph in November.Doug Schoen, a former pollster for Bill Clinton, last week declared it insanity not to concentrate resources on the swing states.

The Democratic strategist said: "My Republican friends think its mad. Before Sarah Palin came along we were investing money in Alaska, for Christ's sake, that could have been spent in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The one thing everyone agrees the Obama camp have woken up to is the toxic effect on their chances of Mrs Palin's arrival on the national scene. Polls show that white women voters, attracted to her down home virtues, now support Mr McCain by a margin of 12 points, the same lead among white women that George W. Bush enjoyed over John Kerry in 2004. Until recently, Mr Obama led among that group of voters by six points.

A senior aide to one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives voiced the fears of many: "Palin doesn't just play to the Republican base. She has much broader appeal."The aide said that her repeated mockery of Mr Obama's boasts about his time as a community organiser in Chicago are "the most effective criticisms of Barack Obama we have yet seen." He said: "Americans in small and medium size towns dont know what the hell a community organiser is. Real Americans graduate from high school or college and get a job that pays a wage. Campus radicals go off and organise a community."

Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter, blamed the defection of women voters from Mr Obama on the atom bomb of ritual abuse by left-wing bloggers and Democratic officials, painting Mrs Palin as a bad mother and religious weirdo.

Ms Noonan wrote: "The snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don't like about the Left."The Republican strategist Dan Schnur said that the effect was to repel blue collar, family-oriented voters. "They didn't like Obama in the primaries and voted for Hillary. And they still don't like him now so they're voting for Palin.

"Obama can still win these voters over, but his difficulty in establishing an emotional connection with them is probably his greatest challenge between now and election day."On Thursday Mr Obama did take advice from Bill Clinton, who is understood to have suggested ways to show those workers that he cares, an area where the former president excelled.But it is a measure of his plight that the man who derailed the ambitions of Mrs Clinton, the most powerful woman in Democratic politics, now needs help from her husband to overcome the popularity of another alpha female who may be an even greater risk to his White House ambitions.

Ain't this priceless? No doubt the MSM will be all over this , , ,==============--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have many smart policy proposals, but not all of them are ready for prime time. This week, FP looks at 10 Obama ideas that should have never seen the light of day. Next week? McCain on the hot seat.

Renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement

What he said: “I will make sure that we renegotiate. … I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.” —Democratic primary debate in Cleveland, Feb. 26, 2008

Why it’s a bad idea: Trade agreements take years to negotiate, and Mexico and Canada would almost certainly seek new concessions of their own in a new round. Obama is right to argue that more economic development in Mexico will lower illegal immigration; he’s wrong to think that bashing NAFTA is the right way to address the Rust Belt’s economic woes. Happily, since the Ohio primary, Obama has backed off his harshest criticisms of the agreement.

Opposing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

What he said: “And I’ll also oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” —Speech to Philadelphia AFL-CIO, April 2, 2008

Why it’s a bad idea: Although Obama cited antilabor violence, the murder rate for union members in Colombia last year was 4 per 100,000, well below the rate for the general population. The deal carries little to no cost for the United States; economists actually predict modest increases in U.S. exports. The upshot for an important ally in the war on drugs, however, is high, and consolidating Colombia’s commitment to open trade with the United States is a worthy goal.

Talking Openly About Bombing Pakistan

What he said: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” —Speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2007

Why it’s a bad idea: Engaging in military strikes in Pakistan happens to be established policy. But, as none other than Joe Biden pointed out last August, “It’s not something you talk about. … The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty.”

Sitting Down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

What he said: Asked if he’d be “willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Obama replied: “I would.” —Democratic primary debate, Charleston, S.C., July 23, 2007

Why it’s a bad idea: Engaging rogue states can be a savvy move, and even the Bush administration has negotiated with Pyongyang and sent envoys to meetings with Iran. But sitting down with heads of state without precondition? That’s another thing entirely, especially when it comes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Carnegie Endowment expert Karim Sadjadpour told the Wall Street Journal, “Only two things can rehabilitate Ahmadinejad politically: bombing Iran or major efforts to engage.” No wonder Obama’s foreign-policy team has walked back its candidate’s off-the-cuff remarks.

Pushing the Patriot Employer Act

What he said: “When I am president … I’ll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I’ve been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate—we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.” —Speech in Janesville, Wis., Feb. 13, 2008

Why it’s a bad idea: British economists Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert slam the bill as, “reactionary, populist, xenophobic and just plain silly.” That’s a bit much. A little populist pandering is hardly a threat to the global economic order—the bill offers employers a small tax credit if they meet six conditions, including the probably unworkable provision that they keep their headquarters in the United States. It’s never smart economic policy to reward companies for placing limitations on their own profitable activities, but as The Economist put it, “Obama deserves a slap on the wrist” for this one, not a full-throated indictment.

Promoting Coal-to-Liquid Fuels

What he said: “The people I meet in town hall meetings back home would rather fill their cars with fuel made from coal reserves in Southern Illinois than with fuel made from crude reserves in Saudi Arabia. We already have the technology to do this in a way that’s both clean and efficient. What we’ve been lacking is the political will.” —Statement introducing the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2006, June 7, 2006

Why it’s a bad idea: Obama’s energy policy has much to commend it. But borrowing an idea from World War II Germany and apartheid South Africa? Bad move. Coal-to-liquid fuels produce nearly twice the greenhouse gases of ordinary petroleum, experts say, and it’s foolish to subsidize an industry that easily could go under if oil prices fall. Under withering fire from environmentalists, the Obama camp clarified his position in June 2007 as, “nless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20% less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels.” It’s since been dropped from campaign materials.

Eliminating Income Taxes for Seniors Making Under $50,000

What he said: “I’ll make retirement more secure for America’s seniors by eliminating income taxes for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year.” —Speech on Nov. 7, 2007, in Bettendorf, Iowa

Why it’s a bad idea: Most seniors already pay no income taxes. That’s because they already get preferential treatment in the tax code. Plus, why are seniors more deserving of tax relief than struggling young families? The Tax Policy Center—run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute—criticized the idea in a recent report, saying that because government spending on seniors is already set to balloon due to retiring baby boomers, “it seems inappropriate to target special income tax breaks to this group.”

Boosting Ethanol Subsidies

What he said: “[Ethanol] ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.” —Statement at the opening of a VeraSun Energy ethanol processing plant in Charles City, Iowa, August 2007

Why it’s a bad idea: As economist Paul Krugman has written, corn-based ethanol is “bad for the economy, bad for consumers, bad for the planet—what’s not to love?” World Bank economist Donald Mitchell blames biofuels, including ethanol, for a 75 percent increase in global food prices since 2002 that has led to economic distress and rioting in such countries as Haiti, Egypt, and Somalia. There’s also little evidence that they do much to prevent global warming. A recent study published in Science demonstrated that the farmland needed to grow corn for ethanol results in deforestation on a massive scale, negating any benefit the reduction in carbon emissions might have. So why does the senator support such a wasteful and damaging subsidy, even voting for the recent farm bill’s billions in pork for ethanol producers? “ecause Illinois … is a major corn producer,” he said in April. At least he’s honest.

Taxing Oil Companies Extra

What he said: “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.” —Speech in Raleigh, N.C., June 9, 2008

Why it’s a bad idea: He’s attacking the symptom, not the disease. It’s certainly hard to defend oil companies making record profits while consumers are struggling to fill their tanks, but Big Oil has very little control over day-to-day gas prices, which are set by global supply and demand and, of course, OPEC. By discouraging oil companies from making big profits, such a tax could potentially discourage them from making investments in new refineries and finding new oil sources, resulting in fewer jobs and even higher prices at the pump. Jimmy Carter tried this in 1980, and it only increased U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Singling out one particular industry for punishment because it is politically unpopular doesn’t make much economic sense, either.

Opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

What he said: “We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less-expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks.” —Speech in Lansing, Mich., Aug. 4, 2008

Why it’s a bad idea: Obama was right in July when he said that the strategic oil reserve “has to be reserved for a genuine emergency.” Selling oil from the 700 million barrel reserve would increase domestic supply and could drive down prices in the short term, but encouraging consumers to use more oil isn’t going to fix anything. And depleting the reserve would leave the United States vulnerable to a supply disruption caused by a natural disaster or further unrest in the Middle East. Obama swapped common sense for this dangerous boondoggle in August after McCain started to hammer him on offshore drilling. So much for tough truths.

"Why it’s a bad idea: Obama was right in July when he said that the strategic oil reserve “has to be reserved for a genuine emergency.” Selling oil from the 700 million barrel reserve would increase domestic supply and could drive down prices in the short term, but encouraging consumers to use more oil isn’t going to fix anything. And depleting the reserve would leave the United States vulnerable to a supply disruption caused by a natural disaster or further unrest in the Middle East. Obama swapped common sense for this dangerous boondoggle in August after McCain started to hammer him on offshore drilling. So much for tough truths."

I had a conversation once with someone who worked on the SPR and he said that you can only empty and refill the caverns but so many times (6?) without them degrading.

Philip J. Berg, Esq. Files Federal Lawsuit Requesting Obama Be Removed as a Candidate as he does not meet the Qualifications for President Thursday, 21 August 2008 23:09 administrator

For Immediate Release: - 08/21/08

Suit filed 08/21/08, No. 08-cv-4083Contact information at the end of this press release. Documents filed with the court and a copy of this press release can be downloaded at the end of this press release.

(Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania – 08/21/08) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, [Berg is a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; former Chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County; former member of Democratic State Committee; an attorney with offices in Montgomery County, PA and an active practice in Philadelphia, PA, filed a lawsuit in Federal Court today, Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083, seeking a Declaratory Judgment and an Injunction that Obama does not meet the qualifications to be President of the United States. Berg filed this suit for the best interests of the Democratic Party and the citizens of the United States.

1. Where was Obama born? Hawaii; an island off of Hawaii; Kenya; Canada; or ?

2. Was he a citizen of Kenya, Indonesia and/or Canada?

3. What was the early childhood of Obama in Hawaii; in Kenya; in Indonesia when he was adopted; and later, back to Hawaii?

4. An explanation as to the various names utilized by Obama that include: Barack Hussein Obama; Barry Soetoro; Barry Obama; Barack Dunham; and Barry Dunham.

5. Illinois Bar Application – Obama fails to acknowledge use of names other than Barack Hussein Obama, a blatant lie.

If Obama can prove U.S. citizenship, we still have the issue of muti-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegance to other countries.

Berg continued:

“Eighteen million Democratic Primary voters donated money, volunteered their time and energy, worked very hard and then not only supported Senator Clinton, but voted for her and often recruited other supporters as well. All the efforts of supporters of legitimate citizens were for nothing because this man lied and cheated his way into a fraudulent candidacy and cheated legitimately eligible natural born citizens from competing in a fair process and the supporters of their citizen choice for the nomination.

Voters donated money, goods and services to elect a nominee and were defrauded by Senator Obama's lies and obfuscations. He clearly shows a conscience of guilt by his actions in using the forged birth certificate and the lies he's told to cover his loss of citizenship. We believe he does know, supported this belief by his actions in hiding his secret, in that he failed to regain his citizenship and used documents to further his position as a natural born citizen. We would also show he proclaims himself a Constitutional scholar and lecturer, but did not learn he had no eligibility to become President except by means of lying, obfuscations and deceptions. His very acts proves he knew he was no longer a natural born citizen. We believe he knew he was defrauding the country or else why use the forged birth certificate of his half sister?

Americans lost money, goods and services donated in their support of a candidate who supposedly was a natural born citizen simply because the DNC officers and party leaders looked the other way and did not demand credentials to answer the questions and prove whether or not Senator Obama was a legitimately natural born citizen, even in light of recent information that has surfaced on websites on the Internet suggesting Senator Obama may not be eligible to become President and questioning his status of multiple citizenships and questionable loyalties! If the DNC officers and.or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship through an oath of allegiance at age eighteen [18] as prescribed by Constitutional laws!

The injunctrive relief must be granted because failing to do so, this inaction defrauds everyone who voted in the Democratic Primary for a nominee that is a fair representation of the voters. Failure to grant injunctive relief would allow a corrupted, fraudulent nomination process to continue. It not only allows, but promotes an overwhelming degree of disrespect and creates such a lack of confidence in voters of the primary process itself, so that it would cement a prevailing belief that no potential candidate has to obey the laws of this country, respect our election process, follow the Constitution, or even suffer any consequence for lying and defrauding voters to get onto the ballot when they have no chance of serving if they fraudulently manage to get elected! It is unfair to the country for candidates of either party to become the nominee when there is any question of their ability to serve if elected.

All judges are lawyers and held to a higher standard of practice than a regular lawyer. It is this Judicial standard that demands injunctive relief prayed for here. This relief is predicated upon one of the most basic premises of practicing law which states no lawyer can allow themselves to be used in furthering a criminal enterprise. And by that gauge alone, failing to give injunctive relief to the 18 million supporters of the other candidate, a true natural born citizen eligible to serve if elected, this court must not allow itself to be used to further the criminal and fraudulent acts to continue and be rewarded by becoming the Democratic Nominee. Failure to give the injunctive relief prayed for will insure that a corrupted Presidential election process will only guarantee a show of unfair preference of one group of people over another group by not demanding the same rules be applied to all groups equally and fairly, especially in light of the fact that both candidates are each considered a minority.

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